Tomo, not as in Friend
by Amielleon
Summary: Yu gets a cat. Yosuke's jealous of that cat. It's a more complicated story in practice.
1. Yosuke

Far too late, Yosuke realized that he had signed off on his own misery one incredibly mundane evening, when Yu was double-checking the contract while he was packing their things. "Yosuke," Yu had said out of the blue; Yosuke made a sound that said he was listening. "Since we'll own the house ourselves, we could keep a pet. Would you mind if we got a cat?"

Yosuke briefly thought about the idea of keeping a cat, some fluffy cute creature that ate and slept and wanted to be pet or something, and—mostly trying to figure out how to pack a lamp—answered, "Sure. Why not."

"Just checking," Yu said.

Yosuke wrapped the light bulb in a sock and eyed the ceramic base. "Do we have any bubble wrap left?"

"Don't think so."

"Dammit."

A month later, early morning on a Sunday after a night of very good sex, Yu said, "Let's go pick out a cat today," and Yosuke said, "Okay," before he was completely awake.

He had been under the impression that this would involve a quick trip to the nearby pet store. The trip was not quick. The two of them—Yosuke with a giant bag of cat food in one arm and a shopping bag of bowls and litter boxes and miscellanea with the other; Yu with a giant bag of cat litter that Yosuke could barely pick up—hauled entirely too many supplies by foot back to their house.

Yu let the litter down gently on the floor, breathing hard and cracking his neck, but giving no sign that he regretted everything. Completely spent and sprawled out on the couch, Yosuke said, "Ugh. Man. We should've taken a taxi."

"Are you tired?" Yu asked, as if his own hair weren't stuck to his forehead with sweat.

"I'm dying over here," Yosuke said, like he hadn't been perfectly capable of carrying tons of boxes during their move. Yu came over and offered him a hand, which Yosuke accepted on instinct, even thought he felt like laying there a little longer. "Coming to think of it. What about the actual... cat?"

"We'll stop by the shelter after we set up here." He gestured to the supplies that Yosuke had dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

Yosuke fell back into the couch with a dramatic groan. "All right. Just give me a moment, partner, and we can..." Yosuke's voice trailed off as Yu's words sank in. "Shelter? You mean pet store?"

"Shelter," Yu repeated with a hint of a frown.

"Dude, the pet store's right there! Isn't the shelter on the other side of town...?"

"We can take a taxi back," Yu offered. Yosuke would later understand that this was to avoid stressing out the cat, never mind stressing out Yosuke, and the very first of the many small ways Yu was more considerate of a small annoying animal than his partner.

The subway ride to the animal shelter was fairly quiet. Yosuke occupied a seat and refused to yield it for the bratty children that came on board, because he had just been made to carry 15 kilograms of stuff in his arms for six city blocks for no pay and was now being marched across the city to pick up a furry animal he had no interest in but would be obligated to share his space with for who-knows-how-long. The children, on the other hand, were still full of the energy and optimism of youth. They could stand.

Halfway there, it seemed to him that Yu was inspecting him, and he said, "What?"

"You look pretty beat," Yu observed unhelpfully.

Yosuke shrugged, uncrossed his arms and recrossed them the other way. He didn't actually say something to Yu, like _This is too sudden, I don't even like cats, and I wanted to do other things on our only day of the week off from work, of course I feel like shit_, because although that was how he felt, he wouldn't say that on a public subway even if he could put it into words. Instead, he said, "How is it still morning?"

In hindsight, if Yu had been as perfect as half the world believed him to be, he probably should have asked Yosuke—while he had his full attention and before they arrived at the shelter—if he was truly all right with getting a cat. It would have been the fairest thing to do, to both Yosuke and the cat.

Instead, Yu cracked a small smile, one of his accommodating I'm-glad-we're-still-all-right smiles, and the topic slipped by. Because one of Yu's imperfections had always been that he left it up to everyone else to start important conversations, and Yosuke didn't have it in him to bring it up like he was actively forbidding Yu from getting his cat.

So they went to the shelter. And Yu got his cat. It went something like this: a volunteer worker who seemed to hate him and love Yu for no reason (like everyone else), a fucking ton of cats lined up along the walls all of which Yu seemed to want to take home, and finally one incredibly ugly calico cat with a face like Vladmir Putin that did not so much "nyaa" as it did make a strained braying sound like it was being strangled to death. Yu somehow decided _that _catwas The One, on account of its ability to open its own cage from the inside which, to Yosuke, sounded like the worst possible trait for a cat to have.

"His name is Tomo," Yu announced in the taxi over the cat's psuedo-dying cries.

"Like 'friend'?" Yosuke said, not really interested, but preferring the sound of Yu's voice to the cat's.

"No, just Tomo."

Tomo made a dying sound again, and Yosuke took some comfort in the fact that the taxi driver seemed just as annoyed as he was.

At home, Yu wrote _Tomo_ on the bowls in permanent marker, as if there was any doubt who would be eating cat food out of the bowls on the floor. Meanwhile, Tomo stayed behind the sofa, where it had been since they let it out of the carrier.

"Is it going to take a piss back there?" Yosuke said, arms crossed, leaning against the counter. The house had only been theirs for a few weeks but Yosuke liked how it smelled.

"He's just anxious about being in a new place," said Yu, first time pet owner and master cat psychologist. "He'll come out when he's ready." Upon second thought, Yosuke was fine with the cat staying under the couch and out of the way.

Out of the blue, Yu proposed, "Let's watch a movie tonight."

"Making progress on that list of classics?"

"Actually, I was thinking of Dumminator 4."

—The latest entry in a series of movies they'd watched together six years ago, when they were teenagers craving special effects and explosions and didn't cringe at the crappy script. As young professionals, they did cringe at the script, and the fights were kind of awkward and the sfx unconvincing, but it was nice sharing a throw, touching shoulders, and laughing about how nothing in the movie seemed dangerous at all after everything they'd been through.

Halfway through, Yu slung an arm across his back and rubbed absentmindedly at the muscles at the base of his neck. He knew Yu didn't personally get anything out of this stuff, and that Yu knew Yosuke did, and it was his wordless way of saying _Sorry about today. Let me make it up to you,_ when Yu didn't think that he'd done something _wrong_ so much as he'd been imperfect in the execution.

Yosuke let him massage him. He was still stiff from his workout this morning, so it felt nice. It put him in the mood to forgive him, which was probably playing exactly into Yu's schemes. But that was all right, too. Some ripped American actor finished saving the world, Yu was trying to make things up to him, and whether or not there was a cat, their lives were still fundamentally the same.


	2. Tomo

Yu loved Tomo.

Yosuke couldn't see why. Tomo left the house smelling like shit and kicked up a fine spray of tiny rocks that dug into his feet if he didn't wear socks. Tomo dropped a mess of fragmented kibble bits around his bowl that left a thin layer of sticky oil on the kitchen floor even if you picked it up. Tomo liked drinking from the toilets and then sticking that same mouth in Yu's face in the morning while kneading incessantly at his hair. Yu didn't even like it when Yosuke touched his hair, so Yosuke didn't understand why this earned the _cat_ a kiss on its toilet-wet nose.

Despite Yosuke's protests, Yu let Tomo have the full run of the house. This meant that the laundry had to be folded and put in drawers right away unless he wanted a layer of cat hair on his shirts and intimates alike. It was a minor blessing that Tomo did not chew on cords, or pee on any soft unsuspecting surfaces. But it did like to attack Yosuke's feet if he wiggled them, which trained him within a very short period of time to stay still while listening to music. (Yosuke had never been this still before in his life.)

Which Yosuke felt was completely unfair. _Yu_ should have trained _Tomo_ not to be a little vicious creature that attacked people in their own house. But Yu would just chide it with a single interjection of "Tomo!" which Tomo never took to heart.

It was all this power and lack of discipline, Yosuke thought, that led Tomo to believe that it outranked him and was duty-bound to protect the natural order through ritualized displays of aggression.

One night in the middle of the week, when he had to get up as early as always the next morning to plaster a giant smile on his face while talking to people about preparing for the possible death of their loved ones, Yosuke suddenly awoke to something on his chest. He opened his eyes in time to see Vladmir Putin snake-hissing in his face, and yelped a half-asleep, "What the fuck!" as Tomo hopped away.

"Tomo!" Yu sighed, turning over slightly to look at where Tomo leapt off the bed, before making himself comfortable again and falling back asleep.

And perhaps it wasn't very realistic to expect Yu to defend Yosuke's honor at hell-o-clock-in-the-morning, but by now he was feeling frustrated and on edge, so he rolled over, taking slightly too much of the blanket, and pointed ignored Yu, who probably didn't notice on account of being asleep.

Work sucked when he hadn't gotten enough sleep. Then again, being home with the cat wasn't much better.

If loving that cat were just one of Yu's eccentricities, Yosuke thought that he might have been able to get their old friends together and talk to him about keeping the cat under control.

The problem was that everyone else loved Tomo too.

"He's so—pfftt—ugly!" Yukiko laughed over Skype, each little peal completely adoring. "I _love_ ugly animals. They're so cute! Chie, come here. Chie! Come look at Yu's cat." Chie came over and poked her tiny nose on screen to take a look at Tomo—being held up to the webcam and looking thoroughly unamused—and Chie broke out into fawning sounds too. "Lookithim!" Yukiko went on. "Isn't he so funny looking!? Snnrrkkk—"

"I think he's a handsome cat," Yu said very seriously, which sent both of the girls into hysterics.

"No," Chie said between gasps, trying to calm herself down, "no, I'm sorry, he looks fine, it's just... doesn't he look kind of like Yosuke!?"

Yu said, "Hm," and turned Tomo around to have a nice long look at its face. Yosuke wished that Inaba never gained access to high-speed internet.

He may have spent a little longer in the bathroom that night, staring at himself in the mirror and convincing himself that he didn't look like a Russian politician, nor an ugly cat.

(_Dammit_, Chie. How did she always manage to kick him right where it hurt most?)

When he came out of the bathroom, he found Tomo lounging in the middle of their bed. And since workaholic Yu always came to bed late and wasn't around to hear him, Yosuke said, "I was here first."

Tomo didn't seem to care. Yosuke edged into the bed, trying not to offend it. The cat seemed suitably pleased with his meekness as he folded up one corner of the blanket and wrapped it around himself without pulling it from under where Tomo laid. _Fuck you_, Yosuke thought to himself as he turned off the lamp.

And then aloud, for good measure, "Fuck you." Tomo did not respond, and Yosuke felt foolish for bothering. He laid very still facing the edge of the bed for fearing of offending his feline overlord.

When Yu came to bed, Tomo got up and let Yu take his space, because Tomo loved Yu, and that was probably why he didn't understand how frustrated Yosuke was with the cat.

Yu made himself comfortable under the covers. All was silent for a moment, and then he said, "You're all the way over there."

"Your cat," Yosuke grumbled by way of explanation.

A few more moments passed before he heard the slither of blankets and felt Yu's hand on his arm. "Come here," Yu whispered, barely audible. Still feeling wronged, for a moment Yosuke considered pretending to have fallen asleep. But ultimately, it was the middle of the work week and he missed Yu too much to spite him. He rolled around and wormed greedily back into the middle of the bed, sharing one of their nightly check-in kisses.

_How did work go today?_

_Meh. Work is work. I'm happy to see you._

If it had to be put into words, Yosuke imagined it meant something like that, exchanged beneath the feeling of Yu's warm breath against his face. Yosuke only realized in that moment how much that the absence of this small routine (thanks to the usual suspect) had made him feel on edge. They didn't say "I love you" often—Yosuke might have said it once, many years ago, in the form of "I love you, man," when they first reunited after Izanami and he was feeling particularly sentimental, and once a few years later, just to see how it sounded. Otherwise, it was one of those things they knew well enough without having to speak words so embarrassingly open and overloaded with a style of romance they had never belonged to.

So instead Yosuke needed these fleeting daily gestures to prove that they were all right, that he hadn't done something unbelievably stupid when he first croaked out to his best friend that he might _like_ like him, in a series of events that led to where they were, frighteningly and wonderfully close, walking through a minefield strewn with things like where to live and how to spend their money and what counted as _tired_ as opposed to _pissy_, and sometimes Yosuke feared that what it all amounted to was the slow and painful discovery that he and his partner were people not meant to live together.

But with Yu trying his best to make things right for him, it seemed much more likely that it was just something anyone in their circumstances would have to sort out. Suddenly, Yosuke felt so warmly toward Yu that if he weren't so tired, he would have liked to throw back the blanket and shove him on his back. But it was the middle of the week and somehow, falling asleep sounded better. Being an adult was weird like that.


	3. Interlude

A lot of horrible things happen quietly. Like when Teddie vanished way back when Nanako had been in the hospital, and his first thought was that the stupid bear was goofing off while important things were happening. It took a few hours for the churning feeling in his gut to build up, not because anything had happened, but because _nothing _happened to reassure him that Teddie was all right.

Or when Chie's dog suddenly just fell asleep and died one night, and Yosuke found out when he checked his text messages in the bathroom in between classes, completely expecting a text from Chie to be about how bad the food was at Junes.

And maybe his feelings toward Yu were like that, something which had been perfect one day, then (without fanfare, without a set place and time) something he discovered to be muddled and sour a month later.

But when it comes to everything blowing up in your face—that takes a spark.

One day, a crash came from the living room.

Yosuke had been in the middle of the completely dumb task of crawling the internet in search of answers to why the refrigerator seemed to only work half the time (leaving them with a lot of spoiled food, which Yu seemed strangely insistent upon eating anyway) when he heard something thud to the floor. And then a second, with the sound of something hard breaking.

Yosuke ran down the stairs to find Tomo balancing on the wall shelf and a pair of picture frames lying on the ground below. The cat looked at him calmly as if it wasn't particularly doing anything wrong.

"Seriously!?" That fucking cat. Up until now it had just gotten on his nerves and jumped him in the night, but now it was _breaking their stuff_? With a sinking feeling, he bent down to pick the frames back up to see how bad it was. The glass on one of them had fractured, sending a spiderweb of cracks across Teddie's face in a picture of the three of them at Junes, when Teddie had finally decided to stay in Inaba instead of following them. If the break had been an inch to the right, it would've separated himself and Yu in some perfectly symbolic cheesy way. But instead, it was just a broken picture frame that had felt important to him and that was worse somehow, made him feel like it was really just another thing in his dumb insignificant life that this cat shat all over in any way it pleased.

Tomo observed him stoically. Like it didn't even care.

Something in him snapped. Before he knew entirely what he was doing, he had sprang back up to his full height and shot one hand out to grab the cat. Apparently caught off guard, Tomo dodged a little too late and Yosuke grabbed hold of a hind leg; instantly, Tomo arced around and clamped its teeth down onto his wrist and he hissed _shit_ in surprise because the thing had never bitten him _this_ hard before. He grabbed the back of its neck with his other hand and wrested his right hand free, its teeth and claws scraping a trail down to his knuckles. Tomo flailed and jolted in his grip, much more than just its nine pounds of bone and muscle, lashing its claws dangerously and hissing and growling, an animal out to kill. Yosuke held it as far away from his body as possible while keeping its face toward him.

"What the hell!" Yosuke yelled. "You don't do that!" He would've shaken it a bit if it weren't already so hard to keep his grip on the seizing and spitting creature. "You listen to me! Stop attacking me! Stop breaking our shit! Just stop! Stop being such a horrible little—"

Yosuke wasn't sure there was a word capable of describing what Tomo was just then. His words stuttered to a stop and instead he made a sound of rage. Tomo caught his sleeve with one claw, and he found his words again. "Stop it! Fuck! Let go, dammit!"

"Yosuke? What are you doing?" came Yu's voice in disbelief. Yosuke turned around to find Yu at the base of the stairs, still wearing his reading glasses, stunned at the sight before him. In that moment, Tomo jerked sharply and dropped from Yosuke's grip, clambering cartoonishly into a sharp turn to dive behind the sofa. "What were you doing!?" Yu repeated more forcefully as he came forward, a dark look crossing his face—a protective look, the look he'd given Namatame when his arm was around Nanako's throat, except this time it was meant to protect Tomo _from_ _Yosuke_ and that made him feel sick inside.

"What am _I_ doing? Your cat broke our shit and mauled me!" Yosuke said indignantly, showing Yu the bleeding cuts across the back of his hand.

The dark look ebbed from Yu's face, and for a moment Yosuke thought he was going to acknowledge that Yosuke was the victim here and something needed to be done. Instead, Yu said, "Don't grab him like that," like it was completely obvious that Yosuke had brought on his own misfortune.

"What the hell, man? 'Don't grab him'? He was knocking stuff to the floor, what was I supposed to do!? Let it and pet it for being such a _good boy_!?"

Yu pressed his lips together. "I mean that mistreating him won't accomplish anything."

"_I'm bleeding and you're still siding with the cat_. I can't believe you. What the fuck!"

"I'm not—" Yu broke off with a sigh and took off his glasses, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand. "I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying, he's a cat. You've got to understand that."

"Me!? I _know _it's a goddamn cat, what about _you_? I keep telling you to _control_ it and you never listen!"

Yu's eyes turned from tired to chilly. His finger closed where he held his glasses tightly by one end. "We can't talk like this."

"Yeah, you're right! You're completely right about that! It's impossible to talk to you once you're doing the..."—Yosuke made a meaningless gesture—"the thing where you're angry and that makes you _super reasonable_. Fuck!" Yosuke shoved past Yu to storm up the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Yu said too calmly.

"Getting my fucking mp3 player, why do _you_ care!"

Yu stayed silent as Yosuke retrieved his music player and shoved his headphones over his head, beyond caring about whether he bled all over them and the table. Yu was still at the bottom of the stairs with his arms crossed, looking in the direction of the sofa—thinking about Tomo no doubt—as Yosuke stormed back down.

"And you're still worried about the cat," Yosuke muttered as he passed.

"You should rinse that out," Yu said, glancing at the bleeding hand he had over his headphones. Somehow, rather than feeling touched, that just really ticked him off.

"Maybe _you_ should make your cat less vicious."

"Tomo acts out against you because you've given him absolutely no reason to like you," he said tersely.

"Great! Still my fault for being a loser." Yosuke just barely stopped himself from grabbing his nice coat with his bloody hand. He made for the kitchen to grab a towel, hating every moment he gave Yu to keep arguing with him.

"_Yosuke_," Yu sighed, like it should have preceded _Stop being such a child _or _It's not all about you _or something else Yu was too nice to say but was definitely thinking right then, thoughts made plain in the tone of a single word.

It should have been unfair to be angry with Yu for things he hadn't even said, but after enough time knowing him, it really wasn't. It was never anything that Yu _said_ that pissed him off, it was more about the entire way he acted at times like these. Aloof, above something so hot-headed and stupid as a lover's spat, completely in the right because he wasn't the one yelling. Kind of like his cat, coming to think of it.

No, it was completely fair to be angry at Yu because it was his fault in the first place and he kept pretending it wasn't.

Yosuke located a towel and gave his hand a quick rinse under the sink—kind of hating that the obvious thing to do was something Yu had claimed for himself as his advice—before wrapping the towel around it, clamping his fingers down on it to keep it in place, and stomping back to the front door. Yu kept watching him from that same spot by the base of the stairs, not saying anything, not arguing, just judging him silently. With his coat shrugged on and a hand on the doorknob, Yosuke found the courage to say, in a voice much less forceful than he'd imagined, "I don't want that cat in my house," before walking out and slamming the door behind him.

The cold fall night air hit his face as he stuffed his headphones over his ears, found the most angry metal song he had, and blasted it at full volume. He felt seventeen again. It wasn't entirely a bad feeling.

He crossed his arms and started to walk down the sidewalk, not caring where he was going. He had taken a lot of walks like these when he was younger, but it had been awhile since he felt like he needed to escape the house for awhile. What a horrible start to their new life together.

A middle-aged woman was walking toward him on the sidewalk. She must've heard the music leaking from his headphones. She took one look at his towel-wrapped hand and crossed the street, obviously trying to look discreet about it. _Fuck her too,_ Yosuke thought. _Probably the gossiping housewife type. Looks judgmental. Great. Wonder when they'll catch onto the fact that we're two men living together_.

Screw Yu coming in and ruining his life. Screw him and the cool way he could deal with everything. Screw him always thinking he's right.

Honestly, sometimes Yosuke had no idea why he ever liked the guy.

Eventually—still in the middle of plenty of unkind thoughts toward Yu, Tomo, and himself—he reached the end of the sidewalk, at a T-shaped intersection with a minor highway. Against all reason, he thought to himself that it was kind of a shitty end to the sidewalk. Back in Inaba, if you went far enough in any direction, you'd either hit a hill with trees and benches, or you'd end up at the Samegawa. Both were pretty good places to mope. But he supposed that in this unfamiliar place he'd have to learn where everything was, and until then he was stuck here at a dead end with nowhere to sit down and the intermittent passing car to intrude upon his privacy.

For a few minutes he just watched the cars pass. The metal singer's growling voice was still screaming something in English that Yosuke had never bothered to look up. He didn't really care what it meant, just that it sounded like how he felt when he was angry. By now all of his meaningful angry thoughts had run their course, and his mind was stuck endlessly repeating the same couple of moments that upset him the most.

The look on Yu's face when he said _what were you doing_.

The way he said _Yosuke_, just the tone of it, the last thing he said before Yosuke left the house.

One from long ago: _You seem to have some objections to... I just mean, if this isn't what you want, I don't want to force you into anything._

Yu had given him an out. Yu knew you shouldn't charge ahead with doubts eating at the back of your mind, and Yosuke had just laughed it off and said it didn't mean anything.

It actually ate a lot at him. He just didn't want to let Yu go.

Because he loved the bastard, despite everything.

And since Yosuke was frequently stricken with doubt over the dumbest things, he always figured that mattered more.

And now that he thought about it, he really should've made his feelings clear about the cat in a serious way before just exploding at Yu like that. And by now, Yu had probably calmed down (for real) and maybe he'd realized that he had been dismissing and ignoring Yosuke. Or maybe Yosuke ought to explain that to him, if he hadn't realized—awkward and dumb and girly as it sounded... on second thought, he hoped Yu realized it himself, like he usually did, because Yosuke could think of no way to explain it that wasn't hopelessly awkward and dumb and girly.

That moment of perfect clarity—where it seemed like all his problems had been amazingly simple and that he could fix them all—abruptly passed, and once again he was standing at an intersection, staring at cars and listening to teenager music and hating every stupid hangup he'd ever had.

He felt useless being out here, and he did feel less angry at least, so he pressed _stop_ on his music player, turned around, and started to head home.

Although he didn't think it would be easy, he still did think that he and Yu could work things out when he got back. Yosuke had at least made it clear how he felt about the cat. By now it had probably sunk in for Yu, and although Yosuke didn't think he'd be lucky enough to be rid of the thing, maybe Yu would start taking discipline seriously.

...Or something. Yosuke would have taken any sign that things would change and that Yu still cared for him as much as before.

His fingers were starting to feel stiff from holding the towel in place. He unwound it to inspect the wound. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but the wounds were raised and swollen and didn't look like they were going to go away cleanly. It would also be nice, Yosuke thought, if Yu acted like he cared about his hand getting cut into ribbons. The cold air felt kind of nice against his hot and itchy skin, so he let the towel dangle from his good hand on the way back.

When he got back home—that little house looking so new and sweet with warm lamplight glowing through the drawn curtains on the first floor—he didn't know what to expect if he opened the door. But a tired sense of calm had set in. As if his body moved by itself, he tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He stepped back into his house.

He saw Yu on the couch with Tomo on his lap. At the sight of Yosuke, Tomo leapt to the floor and went back behind the sofa. Yu didn't meet his eyes.

All at once, Yosuke didn't feel like he had the energy to try talking to Yu. Instead, he went upstairs and showered by himself, bandaged his hand by himself, and fell into their bed by himself. He discovered that when it came to Yu in the flesh and not Yu in his mind, Yosuke was still angry at him, and he even considered locking the bedroom door to demonstrate that point. But in the end, when he got up to turn off the lights, he decided that Yu could come apologize if he wanted to.

By the time he woke up to his alarm in the morning, he was still alone in the room.


End file.
